Cowboys & Angels (19 page)

She closed her eyes and drew in a shaky breath. He dropped his
hand, as if realizing he wasn't playing fair.

“Now that you're engaged, one dance is the only chance I'll
ever have to make my dream come true. For auld lang syne, and all that. Whaddya
say?”

She tried to resist, but that sexy voice, the need in his eyes
and the hint of true emotion—as if he were mourning for something they'd had and
lost—made her finally lower her guard.

One dance. One more time in Rafe's arms.

Then she'd put him out of her mind—and her heart—forever.

“All right, Rafe,” she said, breathing the words out through
closed lips. “For old times' sake, I'll dance with you.”

* * *

H
E
SHOULD
HAVE
let it go. Should have let
her
go.

The minute Ellie Blake had told him she belonged to another
man, Rafe should have swallowed his disappointment, ordered his heart to go back
into the hibernation in which it had existed for the past few years and walked
out of the party.

But he just couldn't do it.

He hadn't planned to seek her out during his holiday leave,
which would end the day after tomorrow. His situation hadn't really changed. He
had another four long years in the army, several of which would be in active
combat. Iraq had been hell, but his next stop on his round-the-world tour of war
zones, Afghanistan, was going to be even worse. So when his cousin's wife had
told him she'd run into Ellie, he should have just ignored the information.
Should have pretended Noelle hadn't mentioned Ellie was attending a New Year's
Eve fundraiser for abused animals at a downtown Chicago hotel.

He just wished his cousin's wife had heard the tidbit about
Ellie's engagement.

But it was too late to retreat now.
One
and done.
He'd dance with her, build up the memory bank and then get
out of here, spending the next two days with his family and returning Ellie
Blake to the deepest corners of his mind and of his past.

He turned toward the dance floor, placing the tips of his
fingers against the small of her back. Even through the shimmery fabric of her
dress, he could feel the tiny protrusions of delicate bone, and couldn't help
remembering how it had felt to drop his hand lower and cup the soft curves of
her ass. Her whole body had always been so perfectly fitted for his, those
curves driving him crazy whether she was wearing casual jeans or nothing at
all.

The nothing at all was especially nice to remember.

God, he'd been crazy about her. Physically and emotionally.
What kind of idiot had he been to let her slip away?

“I was wrong. You have changed a little,” he told her.

“Oh?”

“You don't look like a co-ed anymore.”

“I'm all grown up now. Eighteen months left of vet school, then
I'll be out there doing what I've always dreamed of doing.”

Saving living creatures. That's all she'd ever wanted to do.
What a funny couple they'd made, considering he'd wanted to go off to fight and
kill.

He pushed that out of his head, not wanting dark thoughts to
intrude on what might be his very last moments with Ellie.

He looked down at her, staring intently, saving the vision for
all the days to come when he'd have to rely only on memories to conjure her
face. She was, indeed, all grown up. Her auburn hair was pulled back, a few long
strands dangling around her pale, bare shoulders. He remembered scraping his
lips across that collarbone, inhaling her sweet fragrance, and he couldn't take
his eyes off her skin as they moved through the crowd.

He and Ellie hadn't been involved for long, just a couple of
months, but she'd been the one woman he had never gotten out of his system. The
sex had been explosive—they'd been insatiable for each other, and no woman he'd
been with, before or since, had ever made him lose his mind and be willing to
give up his very soul to have her.

It had been about more than sex, though. She'd been the first
woman he'd really loved. Make that the
only
woman.
She'd been his rock when they'd been together, and his steadying fantasy once
he'd forced her away. He couldn't count the number of times the thought of her
had calmed him in a moment so tense he'd been sure he'd snap.

And now, she really
was
out of his
life. For good. Forever. No going back, no changing things, even though he
wished he could erase that last conversation, when he'd told her he wouldn't be
calling again.

He'd done his job all too well and she'd taken him at his word.
That was probably the best thing for her. Unfortunately, acknowledging he should
be happy for her, that she was better off, didn't stop his gut from churning or
his muscles from clenching.

“Good band,” she said.

“I guess. If you enjoy this kind of music.”

He didn't, usually, preferring classic rock to the jazzy,
blues-type stuff the musicians had been playing tonight. But he had to admit,
this was a lot better to dance to...if the object of the dance was getting as
close as possible to a woman who drove you crazy.

“I do,” she said, turning to face him as soon as they reached
the edges of the swaying crowd, though neither started to dance. “I guess I'm
old-fashioned. Remember? We went to that techno club one night and I ended up
getting a migraine and we had to leave?”

He remembered. A smile tugged at his lips. “I believe that was
because of the Long Island iced teas.”

Her brow furrowed as she remembered. “Oh. Right.”

She sounded sheepish and appeared embarrassed by the memory.
Not to mention cute as hell.

“How many was it...six? Seven?”

“Four,” she snapped. “They tasted just like regular iced
tea.”

“You were such an innocent.”

“
You
weren't. You let me drink
them.”

“Sorry. I regretted it when I realized how sick you were.”

“You regretted it more when I threw up on the way home.”

He lifted a hand to her hair, unable to resist fingering one of
those flaming strands. “I held your hair out of the way.”

“Not one of my finest moments.”

Maybe not. But what he most remembered about that night was how
strangely good it had felt to take care of her. He'd never experienced that with
a woman before, that desire to make sure she was safe and healthy.

That night, he'd made a resolution to never do anything to hurt
her, if he could possibly avoid it. And stringing her along while he was in
Iraq...that had hurt her, and would continue to hurt her. Which was why he'd
forced himself to let her go.

“Well?” she said, holding her hands up. They'd been standing
there talking as dancing couples moved around them.

He hesitated, aware that taking her in his arms would simply
cement his certainty that he'd made the biggest mistake of his life in letting
her go.

The song fell somewhere between slow and fast. And this wasn't
the type of place for the arms-around-neck, hands-on-butt,
bodies-crammed-together type of movement he was used to from the old days, when
he'd done things like going to parties or clubs and finding a hot girl to hook
up with.

Christ, those days seemed to belong to somebody else's mental
scrapbook. They were so far removed from the life he lived now.

Ellie, though? Ellie was connected to just about every good
thought he'd had during the long, lonely, dangerous years he'd spent in a
far-off land where everyone was either friend or enemy and there was often no
real way of telling them apart until it was too damned late.

“I'm not the best dancer,” she said, as if noticing his
hesitation and interpreting it as a lack of confidence in his dancing ability.
Not in his own sanity at having shoved aside the one perfect relationship he'd
ever had.

“You're talking to the king of two left feet, remember?”

“I suppose you must've gotten more nimble.” Her smile was
faint, but there was a searching concern in her pretty green eyes.

“I suppose.”

Yeah, he'd done some dancing in Iraq. Considering it seemed the
entire country was mined, any soldier who wasn't quick on his feet risked losing
them.

He thrust off those thoughts. He only had the length of one
song to build up a lifetime of memories with the woman he'd never been able to
forget. And what he'd feel in those moments seemed worth any lingering regrets
later.

He drew her close, resting one hand on her hip, the other
twining with hers at their sides. They began to sway, and he found it easier
than he'd figured. Maybe because he wasn't concentrating on his feet or even on
the music. Only on how it felt to finally be pressed against her soft body,
remembering the first time he'd made love to her, in his crappy old apartment.
They'd been insatiable, locked together, naked, hot and hungry...for hours. He'd
buried himself inside her body, sure he'd never felt anything as good as being
wrapped tightly in all that heat. He'd lost himself in her, and hadn't ever
wanted to find his way back out.

Now, looking down into those eyes, into that sweet,
heart-shaped face, he lost himself again in those moments, as if the past four
ugly years hadn't even happened.

“I'm glad to see you, Ellie,” he murmured, meaning it. He
couldn't regret finding her, even if it meant coming face-to-face with the
reality that he'd never be with her, that she really had moved on and fallen in
love with another man. That she would wear someone else's ring and have someone
else's babies.

Rings and babies hadn't been on his mind when he'd left Chicago
four years ago. War had. Fighting and adventure and adrenaline and patriotism.
Living up to some standard of manhood that Hollywood and boasting friends said
every guy should.

Tonight...holding her in his arms, knowing she'd never be there
again—he didn't think he would ever stop wondering if he'd made the wrong
decision.

“I'm glad you're all right,” she finally replied, her voice
soft, hesitating, as if she was unsure what to say. Maybe she figured admitting
she was glad to see him, too, would have been disloyal to her fiancé.

Her
fiancé.
His stomach churned at
the word and every muscle in his body tensed.

He was envious of a man he'd never met, and would never meet.
Envious of the years that man would have with Ellie, of the future they'd build.
Jealous as hell of the nights they'd sleep side by side and the mornings they'd
wake up bathed in sunlight as they listened for the little footsteps of their
children.

Around them, the voices of the crowd began to swell. The
announcer was saying something, the band had segued from smooth jazz into a
raucous celebration. He faintly heard someone calling off the numbers, counting
down from ten. The revelers were ticking off another year, consigning to the
past everything that had come before this particular minute in time.

He and Ellie stopped dancing, remaining very still in the
middle of the floor, staring at each other. He saw so much in those aquamarine
eyes—from love to anger to fear to longing—that part of him wished he'd left her
alone, just walked away when she'd told him there was someone else.

“Happy New Year!”

Voices rang out, happy shouts, and the band began to play “Auld
Lang Syne.” All around them, couples stopped to kiss in the New Year, expressing
hope for a wonderful, happy future.

This was the end of all he and Ellie had ever been and all they
would ever be. He'd never see her again after tonight.

He had to say goodbye forever.

So without asking, without warning, he bent and brushed his
lips across hers in a kiss as tender as it was fleeting. Then, his face close to
hers, he whispered, “Happy New Year, Ellie. I wish you nothing but
happiness.”

Watching her through eyes that might have held the tiniest hint
of moisture—though he'd deny it with his dying breath—he began to back away,
melting into the throng. She watched him go, step by step, not lifting a hand to
stop him, even though her tears said a part of her wanted to.

But it was too late. Far too late. You couldn't go back to the
past. Couldn't recapture something that you'd intentionally let slip away.

All that was left for both of them to do was move on.

Without each other.

Copyright © 2013 by Leslie Kelly

ISBN-13: 9781460322611

COWBOYS & ANGELS

Copyright © 2013 by Vicki Lewis Thompson

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